In Chinese there is a word, chunyun, it is used to describe the high traffic during the Chinese New Year. Everyone heads back to their family home from the holidays. Knowing this, it wasn’t so surprising then that they were sold out of tickets for the sleeper section of the train when we went to buy them not much more than week before travelling to Lugu Lake.
The area is made up of a number of small villages surrounding a large mountainous lake which crosses the border of Sichuan and Yunnan provinces. It is advertised as “the kingdom of the female,” as the Mosuo ethnic group there continues to live in matriarchal societies. Depending on which section you go you will find either a fairly traditional style of Mosuo life or a lot of hotels and tourist shops. Although the spring and summer months bring in a lot of tourists, the winter is still very quiet. It is in the mountains so it does snow and is quite cold during the morning and night, but generally sunny and warm in the afternoons.
